MAP MENU Add station reference

The station reference control panel allows you to add markings on your map that show available weather stations. You can use this to develop locator charts for your forecast desk, and help find stations that are not reporting data or are being omitted by the data provider. The source of all station reference information is the Digital Atmosphere station file (digatmos.stn). The control menu, in which you may select types of stations as well as the general appearance, appears as shown below:

Plotted symbol. This is fairly self-explanatory. The mark on top of each weather station may be drawn as a square, circle, triangle, a hollow form of these, a cross, or a user-defined character (such as the letter X). The color and width of all marks are controlled in File > Preferences > Styles under the "stl" (station reference lines) row.

Size of symbols. Controls how small or how large the symbol mark will be plotted. A value of 3 is recommended for most purposes. You should change this when plotting extra large or extra small maps.

Label 1 and Label 2. Digital Atmosphere can plot a text label next to each station symbol. This can contain the ICAO (4-letter alphabetical code), the WMO (5-digit numeric code), or the station name. The font used for labels is controlled in File > Preferences > Styles under the "stt" (station reference text) row.

Category. You may want to plot only radar sites, or only upper air sites. If these are annotated as such in the digatmos.stn file, they can be plotted.

Filter according to station status. The station lists do contain stations which have been flagged as obsolete (which is done when an equal sign is in column 5 of the station tables). Use this dropdown to change how Digital Atmosphere responds to such a condition, if at all.

Anti-crowding. In urban areas, symbols and labels may overlap each other. Use this to control the crowding of symbols next to one another. Pressing the All button sets the factor to 100 (full cluttered), plotting all stations.

Plot only stations in this country/province. Use this text field to force Digital Atmosphere to ignore all symbols except those in locations that you specify. The country code should be in ISO 3166 format (equalling those in columns 51-53 of the station tables, such as CAN for Canada), and state/province codes should be equal to a 2-letter abbreviation used in columns 55 -56 of the station tables (e.g. NY for New York). Press Clear to reset these values to accept all stations.